As its consorts moved outwards to exchange long-range plasma blasts with the Dreen destroyers, the chaos ball ship fired blast after blast from its main gun.
The chaos balls moved at nearly light speed. Fired from five light-seconds out, the balls took a bare seven seconds to reach their targets. They could only be detected at the last minute on the way in, but the Dreen reacted by maneuvering. By continuous delta-V actions, the ships could avoid most of the blasts. A few, however, impacted their targets. As the conn crew watched, one of the chaos balls hit a Dreen destroyer, ripping a hole from stem to stern. The ship listed off-course for a moment, then exploded in a bright, actinic flash.
“Conn, Tactical. Dreen fighters moving out to intercept the Caurorgorngoth.”
“Can we figure out a place they’re going to be in space where we’re far enough away they won’t notice us dropping torps?” the CO asked.
“Yes, Conn. Already plotted. We’re not sure it will be in their direct path as before, but it will be close.”
“Pilot, lay in that course,” Spectre said. “Tactical, figure out a second drop point. We’ll go drop these mines, make a series of runs in against the carrier again, then drop some more. Hopefully we’ll be able to winnow down the fighters.”
“Okay, straight on or right?” Smith asked.
They’d finally encountered a cross corridor. They’d previously encountered two more nurseries, one of them of thorn-throwers. One had been newly hatched but it could barely fire and Berg had taken it down before Smith could get in a lick. They’d spent some time destroying all the thorn-throwers and then dropped grenades in to keep them from growing back.
The aft corner of the corridor was marked with more of the alien script, these in vivid primary hues. The top script was a bright purple, about head-high on an Adar, under it another in yellow and descending nearly to the deck. The script wrapped around the corner and was no more than a couple of symbols. Berg ran his hand down the markings and they brightened, chattering in a high-pitched language.
He touched the blue symbol and it spat out a short message, the sound of the alien tongue almost like a chime. He noticed that each of the scripts was not only a different set of words, short, no more than two or three, but in a different tone. If he had any skill in music at all, he could have played the script like a piano. The opposite corner appeared to be an exact duplicate.
Directions? Orders? He was sure he’d never know but it fascinated him as he ran his finger down the corner.
“Right,” the staff sergeant replied. “We’re not finding anything vital in this corridor. If there’s a bridge, it’s going to be deep in the ship. Same for environmental.”
Flick in, fire, flick out. Flick in, fire, flick out. It had become so routine, Spectre let the pilot take over. They were doing ten evolutions, then pausing to adjust course and speed and review their strikes. There was more time taken to review than to attack.
The nausea accompanying the rapid transitions was getting worse, though. The CO shook his head and swallowed as he watched the replay.
“Good one that time, son,” Spectre said. The carrier had gotten its remaining fighters off, of course, so it was not nearly as spectacular. But it had been a good solid hit on the rear of the Dreen ship. If only the ball generator they had did more damage!
“Conn, Tactical. Fighters approaching mine point.”
“On display,” Spectre replied.
The view was just empty space but then it blossomed into light.
“Did they take them out?” Spectre asked. “We laid eight torps. Did we get anything?”
“Three appear to have prematurely detonated, Conn. We’re waiting on a bandit count… Conn, Bandit count before mines seventy-three. Bandit count after mines, sixty-four. We got eleven.”
“Not too shabby,” Spectre said. “You got another position for us?”
“Working on it, Conn.”
“Right, next run. This time, son, I want you to lead ’em a little.”
Enemy lesser ships in range. Engage main cannon.
“What is that?” Smith shouted.
The ship had filled with a massive whine, like a billion angry bees but at a much higher frequency. It had started low but rapidly climbed up the scale. Suddenly, it shuddered, almost throwing them off their feet, and the whine died away.
“Did we take a hit?” Nicholson asked, looking around.
“I think it was probably the ship’s main gun,” Berg replied.
“What could make a ship like this shudder like that?” Staff Sergeant Hinchcliffe asked.
“A really, really, really big gun, Staff Sergeant.”
“Sir, the Fatutug is… gone,” Favarduro said, wincing.
“What happened?” Kond asked calmly. The Fatutug had been covering their left side, engaging a Dreen destroyer that was attempting to flank them.
“There was an energy surge from the Dreen dreadnought,” Favarduro said. “We detected no weapon but it apparently fired at the Fatutug. Fourteen treek after the energy surge, the Fatutug blew up.”
“Contact the Sharp Sword,” Kond said. “See if their sensors detected anything.”
“All I got was a streak of light, Conn.” The TACO was clearly nervous. The enemy had just attacked with a weapon that nobody could understand. “Slowing it down… still a streak of light. It looked sort of like a chaos gun, but not really.”
“Mass driver,” Weaver said, looking at the readings. “Got a gravitational spike from the area, indicating a big mass moving at relativistic speeds. Big, big big one and really fast. It looks as if it’s traveling at about .3 c. Tactical, Astro, has Sierra One reduced velocity?”
“Roger, Astro. It’s accelerating, again, but it definitely reduced velocity there for a minute or two.”
“Work with me, here, Astro,” Spectre said. “What are we facing?”
“A mass driver fires, well, a mass,” Weaver replied. “Think the gun on a Bradley, sir. It’s got a depleted uranium penetrator but the important thing is that it heads downrange really fast and it’s really heavy. This thing is relativistic, meaning that it gains an enormous energy punch from that. Being hit by that gun is going to knock any of the Hexosehr ships out of the game. We’d just end up as a smear of plasma. And it’s long range. Accurately, over five light-seconds at a guess.”
“That makes sense,” Kond said when he received a reply to his message. “We must endeavor to avoid being hit by that weapon. Begin random evasion maneuvers. We continue battle.”
“Left or right?”
The corridor they had been following had reached a dead end. The corridors were narrower here, as well, but still wide enough to accommodate the Wyvern armor.
The team had almost ceased to notice the occasional touches of the Dreen. Anything that was a control was covered by blue fungus. In fact, it was how they identified controls. Occasionally there would be an extrusion on the floor, in a corner, on the ceiling. By and large they simply avoided them.
There had been occasional compartments along the way. They’d opened a few up but most were empty. Living quarters or supply lockers for the previous owners. But they had all been stripped to the bare metal walls. There was no trace of the former inhabitants except their enigmatic script.